Orisis's Dorm Master
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: They thought it would be a cat, like their predecessors.
**A/N:** Written for the GX bingo, the non-flash version, #197 – Duel Academia Island, and for the Diversity Writing challenge, c20 – write about gaining an understanding for something.

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 **Orisis's Dorm Master**

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They'd thought the rumour of the previous two years having a cat for a dorm master was strange. Turned out they had a guy in an Orisis jacket who didn't look any older than them except when his eyes changed colour (and they rarely did, in front of them anyway) and who was hardly ever there in the first place.

Oh, he was there on opening night, sitting on the floor and playing with the cat who'd allegedly been the dorm master for the last three years. And there was the air of something around him. A few swore they saw a dragon lady leaning against the wall, and a fluff-ball that looked like a Kuriboh with wings (the infamous Hane Kuriboh?) floating about, and a white-spaceman fluttering in and out (and that had to be Elemental Hero Neos). He claimed the cooking was done by a Tome-san that they should all get to know and be friends with, and help push her truck up a hill if it ever broke down (and it took them asking Tome-san from the card shop the whole story before they even understood that bit of advice). And then he heaped his plate three times higher than the rest of them, told them to have fun at Duel Academia and don't worry about dorm ranks, and dug in.

They rolled with it, because it was the first night. When they went to the common room in the morning to await their schedules though, he wasn't there. Just a pile of schedules on the front desk, and two ladies from the card shop setting out breakfast.

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One month later, the night before the first set of tests, they met him again. 'Don't worry, don't worry.' He flittered about like a butterfly, catching the students panicking about the exams, smiling at all of them. 'Orisis is the best dorm, you know.' And they couldn't see why because Orisis was at the bottom of the barrel and Yuuki Juudai was really its only claim to fame.

Except when someone told him that, he laughed and told another story. A story about a Maeda Hayato who'd failed his advancement exams twice but wound up as one of Pegasus' top card designers – and who'd never made it past Orisis Red.

So you could get some dreams at Orisis. But not even Yuuki Juudai could show them how to be a pro duellist without advancing.

He had stories though. Lots of them. About Marufuji Ryo's short tenure, about Edo Phoenix, about Manjyoume Jun. He knew a lot of famous people. Had gone to school with them. And he was famous himself. Famous for saving the world when even Mutou Yuugi had fallen short.

But he told his stories and went to bed and was gone the next morning. And one or two of them were promoted. They gained a couple new faces, demoted from Ra. And those seeking comfort knocked on the dorm master's door and found the room empty, and had to return to their peers instead.

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He popped up sporadically since then, always bringing his cat (and duel spirits, those who could see them claimed), and stories from his Academia days but never about what was beyond it. And it made them wonder why the hero of the world was wasting his time (or bits of it, because he didn't spent a lot of time in the dorms, all in all) being their head and trying to encourage them with success stories that didn't all come from academics.

And then he told them about a professor who'd worked too hard and was now resting at the bottom of the ravine, and that one shocked them. 'Not that everyone who works hard winds up like that,' he said hastily, 'but there needs to be the right balance. Selfless and selfish. Work and play. Adult and child. And that's what growing up's all about. Finding the balance.'

And then he told them another story, an even more terrifying one.

And that was the first time they saw his brown eyes turn slowly gold.

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That story about Haou was an other world fable, they assumed at first. Though they'd picked up the bitterness in his tone, they thought its roots were elsewhere. After all, they knew how he'd gotten lost across dimensions. How over a hundred students had gotten lost, and there was a handful that still hadn't made it back. They assumed it was a story from back there.

But then someone put together the gold eyes and how their dorm master's had been steady getting there, and they realised it wasn't a fable after all. Or far away.

Just a warning, just like the story about the professor had been a warning. Avoid the extremes. Find the right balance.

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In their third year (the third year of the students who first got Yuuki Juudai as their dorm-master), they got a new teacher, Tenjoin Asuka. Evidently a friend of their dorm master because she found herself checking in on them a lot, and chatting with Juudai when he was there. In fact, she became their new signal, the way they knew he was around because she'd be talking to someone instead of waiting patiently, and he'd be enthusiastically replying.

And then one day, she told her students a story. They weren't quite sure why, but the Orisis ones could recognise it because they knew the drop-out boy she referred to was their dorm-master. The other students didn't. Didn't realise that marks weren't the only thing that mattered. Didn't realise they needed a balance but they'd learnt it already, hearing stories.

Tenjoin-sensei's story was more concise than Juudai's – who'd given it to them in lots of pieces and had left certain bits out. They both left out the names. They knew though. They didn't ask because they didn't need to know any more, though one student did want to know if the dragon lady that always followed Juudai around was his Yubel. She was, Tenjoin-sensei confirmed, but she couldn't see spirits so she didn't know if the spirit really was always there.

Juudai was surprised, and happy, to know they could see them. 'Talk to them,' he offered, and then wandered off to talk to someone else, leaving the third year stuttering through his hero worship and slight fear – because he couldn't talk to _his_ cards yet. But he could talk to his dorm master's without a problem.

The dragon lady – Yubel – just shrugged. 'Juudai has a way of doing things,' she explained. 'Somehow, just getting to know him makes people stronger.'

And then he could talk to his cards, after that.

Of course, when he went to thank Juudai and Yubel, they were gone. Again.

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He showed up to their graduation. Every year's graduation, actually, but they didn't know that because he'd vanish soon after and the graduates would be on a boat back to the mainland and nobody left save the teachers to spread the world.

But it was a pleasant surprise anyway. Juudai always did try to appear on all their important days and nights even if he was off elsewhere most of the time (and Tenjoin-sensei and Principal Chronos seemed to know where that was, but weren't telling and neither was Juudai himself). And they even got to see him in a duel. Which they never had before. Showing off Neos and Yubel and Hane Kuriboh to even those who couldn't see the spirits always following him. And Pharoah, the previous dorm master, curled up near his feet and watching the duel.

And they'd thought their three years in Orisis would be a disaster, starting with having a cat as their dorm master.


End file.
